my microcosm

My Family's Vagina: and Other Stories

As a younger man, I wouldn't have known what to do with this zine. It would have made me uncomfortable, confused, maybe even guilty. But there's a power to recognize brilliance in adulthood, a confidence. It's a zine about vaginal health told from one family's experiences. It's not built on shock factor but seems more to thrive on the societal and cultural silence around talking about women's health, sexual health in particular, or as author Sarah Godfrey puts it, "patriarchal fears about vaginas." There are a lot of stats and facts about vaginal health and diseases in these pages, a glossary, mythological stories involving vaginas, the story of her birth, along with her brother's and her sister's and her mom's vaginal health during and after, her own health, and some vaginal resources in the Bay Area. Powerful!